Black Diamond

kitchens. They had clearly been baking all week, vying to outdo one another with their
sacristains
and
madeleines, tartes aux noix
and
galettes
for the children. There were bowls of raw baby carrots and tangerine segments, apples in bowls for bobbing and long rows of plastic glasses filled with orange juice and milk. Everything to fill with delight the soul of a healthy five-year-old, thought Bruno, and healthy forty-year-olds as well, even when clad in red velvet and a false white beard.
    “Ah, our Father Christmas has arrived,” said Mathilde. “You look splendid, Bruno. It is you under all that?”
    “Ho, ho, ho, it is indeed, Mathilde,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her thickly powdered cheeks and shaking hands with the three men. Pons senior, evidently still smarting fromhaving Bruno’s wine poured down the front of his trousers, gave him a cold nod.
    “I’m very glad we were able to combine all the parties this way and leave politics out of it,” said Bill with a brittle and unconvincing brightness. His features were drawn and strained. He stood to the left of the mayor and his father to the right. Neither one looked at the other or seemed ready to acknowledge his presence in any way. “After all, it’s for the children.”
    “And after that incident with the manure pond, you wouldn’t have been allowed to hold it at your place anyway,” said the mayor drily.
    “You certainly took care of that,” said Bill, sourly. He began to speak again, but the mayor interrupted and spoke over him.
    “And, Bruno, we have to thank Boniface here for a most generous donation of a thousand euros to buy presents for the children. We just about cleaned out the toy department at the supermarket, and Mathilde’s dear ladies here have been wrapping them all day while you were in Bordeaux. How did that go, by the way?”
    “I’ll give you a full report tomorrow,” Bruno said, adjusting the hook that attached the white beard to his ears. Mention of Bordeaux reminded him with a jolt of Isabelle and the ambush at Arcachon later that night. He felt a flash of memory of his own days in the military, the rush of adrenaline before an operation, coming to terms with the fear, mouth dry and unable to eat. And then he remembered the sniper’s bullet that caught him in the hip and had spun him bleeding into the snow. He hoped she stayed well behind the Fusiliers Marins, as she’d said she would.
    He turned to young Pons. “Bill, I’m having trouble here, could you help with this hook for my beard? It seems to be tangled in my collar.” As Pons began fiddling with the hook, standing so close that the scent of his cologne was almost offensively strong, Bruno asked, “Where are your chef’s nieces? This party’s for all the children.”
    “They’re not well,” Pons replied. “Got the flu. Besides, they only speak Chinese.”
    “Kids learn languages fast, they’ll be bilingual by summer. You should have a letter from the
mairie
by now about getting them into school.”
    “Not much point. They’ll be going home to their parents after Christmas. There, that hook should hold now.”
    Parents? Bruno had read somewhere that China limited families to a single child. The excited sound of childish voices was swelling beyond the double doors that led to the hallway. Mathilde looked at her watch, cast an appraising glance over the array of food and drink and rolled her eyes.
    “Brace yourselves,
messieurs
,” she said, heading to open the doors. “The barbarians are at the gate.”
    The noise grew into a high-pitched roar, the doors opened and the sound redoubled. Wriggling, pushing and squeezing to be first into the hall, the horde erupted into the vast room, which was suddenly filled with shrieking children, heading like so many locusts toward the food on the tables. Anxious mothers followed them in.
    “Silence,” roared Bruno in his best parade-ground voice. The place was suddenly still.
    “Ho, ho, ho, is this any way to greet Father Christmas,” he went on in an almost normal voice. “We have to arrange ourselves so I can say hello to everybody properly.” He asked allthose age six and over please to go to the right of the hall and all the under-sixes to the left. Mothers with babies and toddlers were instructed to keep their children at the back of the hall.
    From the corner of his eye, Bruno saw a new figure hurrying through the doors, slipping off her coat. It was Pamela, coming late to volunteer, and